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Rapping Reader
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Description
Rapping Reader is an interactive multimedia computer application designed to
improve childrens reading ability. Rapping Reader uses the childs
familiarity and fascination with music by giving the child the task of writing songs for
of his/her favorite musical group or artist. The childs first assignment is to serve
as the artists or groups junior writer. In this role, the child is placed in
charge of a hit song and is given tasks (find the missing words, unscrambling the
songs words, writing the correct word in a phrase) that require him/her to use their
knowledge of the song's lyrics to read and manipulate the lyrics of the song. After the
child has demonstrated his ability to read the words of the song, he is promoted to head
writer. As head writer, the child has two task. The child must use his creativity to write
a parody. Second, the child can audition to become a rapper for the studio. To audition,
the child has to create a music video. The child creates pictures to illustrate his rap
and then the child writes his own lyrics. Finally, the child records his lyrics. The final
product is a synchronized video of the child's written lyrics, sung lyrics, and
illustrations.
Rational for Design of Rapping Reader
Rapping Reader, the initial system, was designed for a target audience of African
American boys who have experienced difficulty learning to reading. As stated earlier, a
childs motivation and background knowledge are key determinants of how successful a
child will be in learning to read. Thus, I wanted to build an environment to test whether
culturally relevant reading material and motivating tasks could help improve the African
American boys reading skills. The objective was to link reading to an activity with
which the students were familiar and enjoyed, rapping. To this end, I decided to use rap
lyrics as reading material since African American boys are the group most associated with
rap music. In addition, I situated the environment in a fictitious record studio since
this is a location where many of the target audience would like to work. I hypothesized
that a learning environment that uses rap lyrics as reading material would create:
- A positive effect on a students perception of the importance of learning to read.
- A positive improvement in a students sight vocabulary.
- A positive improvement in their motivation to read.
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